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As a self-psychologically oriented psychotherapist, I currently lead a coeducational therapy group for high functioning adults, ages 25 to 50, that has been operating continuously for 15 years. The members of the group usually stay in the group for several years and are either in individual treatment with me concurrently or have terminated individual treatment with me, or are in concurrent individual treatment with a close colleague. I have found self psychological understanding to be invaluable in analyzing what occurs in the group and what appears to be curative. Mirroring, idealizing, and alterego transferences manifest in group therapy as well as individual therapy, and both modalities done concurrently benefit many patients (Weinstein, 1987). I would first like to review briefly a few theoretical premises, and then share an extraordinary event that occurred last year in our group, and to analyze the event from a self psychological perspective, specifically focusing on the grandiose, exhibitionistic line of development.
It is generally held among group therapists writing from a self psychological view, that the increased number of available selfobjects provided in a group setting can offer, for a narcisistically vulnerable patient, an increased opportunity for optimal response, which can lead to increased psychic-structure building. There are many individuals on whom a group patient can transfer his mirroring needs, indeed the experience of having eight sets of empathic eyes focused on one can be experienced as an intense dose of mirroring. Of course,